openarenafandomcom-20200216-history
Talk:Manual/Weapons
My edits Frankly, Gig, you've done an excellent job, but this page was extremely hard to read. First, manual pages are supposed to be lecture-friendly and most of the manual pages in this Wiki are not. Everything was sacrificed for completeness sake, and shouldn't be that way. Completeness is a good thing, but it stops being good when, in order to achieve completeness, everything else has to be sacrificed. The main issues I saw were walls of text, parabombing (too many stuff between parentheses), many mentions breaking the lecture of the page, and the three most prevalent issues I saw were: * Mentions to mods, which are totally irrelevant since in the manual for the game itself we're talking about the base game (of course mods are going to modify weapons to suit their needs) * Too many mentions to the game's console, giving the impression that the game is heavily dependant on it, when in practice the game console isn't really needed in order to enjoy the game. * Mentions to mapping, which are best left in the mapping pages, they are irrelevant for a game's manual. I know we are not wikipedia, but, once again, manual pages are supposed to be lecture/reader/user-friendly, and in the case of OA's manual, talk about the base game. Perhaps complementary articles might be done in order to add these bits of info? --PumpkinKnight (talk) 13:46, November 17, 2013 (UTC) * OK, I've created an appendix for the additional notes and commands removed from the main page. This should work to preseerve those notes as well as to keep the readability level of this page in an acceptable level. --PumpkinKnight (talk) 16:47, November 17, 2013 (UTC) Uhm... Maybe I would have preferred if you would have waited for a reply before applying the changes.... however, I'm going to look into the changes, maybe the "appendix" thing is a good idea. I don't know yet, I yet have to read that. * However, what can I say in general, is that I find nothing strange about mentioning game's console commands. I don't think that console is only for server admins or very very advanced players: OA is derived from Q3, (also) famous for its powerful console customization features, and anyone -except very new players- can take advantage of console features... of course, when a GUI option in also available, I think mentioning both is advisable (I tried to do so in Graphic options page, just to mention an example). ** And I think that mentioning a console command where you talk about the feature it controls can be useful. Of course, there is to evaluate each time. ** I don't think in this game there is a precise border between "players" and "server admins"... anyone who hits the "skirmish" button is creating a custom match, making the first step into running his own server. Of course, this is far from an admin of an internet server, but just to say that the border is vague... * About mods, well... there are features that sometimes people ask for, not knowing that they already exist in some mod. I don't see bad suggesting "X works in Y way. But if you have seen it working in Z way, we are not drunk, it's just that you saw it in some mod." (where X may be the hook, that some mods use in a very different way than baseoa)... or leading people searching for a certain feature to the mod that may satisfy them... of course, in main page just a brief mention, leaving details to the page of the mod itself. Also this should be evaluated each time: I'm not telling to make a page full with mod references, but a few of them may be useful (I can agree distinguish what's "useful" or not is not always easy... of course we have talk pages to discuss!). * About mapping hints, there is the problem about where to write them, considering we do not have a complete "mapping course" here in the wiki... one then may place those hints as random-sequence suggestions in pages such as "mapping", or trying to briefly mention them in a place that is however related with the topic (e.g. the place where we talk about "ammo boxes"...). Bye for now, I'm going go take a look to the changes! ;-) --The Gig (Contact me) 08:28, November 18, 2013 (UTC) ::Okay, I looked at the changes, and I think this may work. :-) I have done some small fixes to the two pages. The thing I'm still not sure is about the best way to divide the "appendix" page in sub-sections: at the moment, you divided it into "mod-related", "cvars" and "other".... maybe it may have been better to more or less follow the scheme of the main page (something like "general", "standard weapons", "missionpack weapons", "grappling hook", "pick-up and ammo", "other")? I'm not sure... ::Another thing we may consider is that maybe we may add something (a phrase, a symbol, an acronym?) to point out that for about a certain topic there are important infos the appendix page (I'm thinking about the grappling hook and the lightning gun). Just an idea.. --The Gig (Contact me) 10:42, November 18, 2013 (UTC) :::Knight, what do you think about the sections of the "appendix" page, then? Maybe dividing it for topics instead of categories may be better? --The Gig (Contact me) 11:33, November 19, 2013 (UTC) :::: I'm fine, as long as it keeps the additional notes out of the manual page. --PumpkinKnight (talk) 12:47, November 19, 2013 (UTC) :::::Okay, I'll try something when I will have some time. This week I'm really too busy with my job, so probably next week. I have not even been able to take a look to your edits in ESC menu and Player settings pages yet (and probably will not be able to check also tomorrow)... can I ask you to wait for the next week before creating new "appendix" pages, to be able to keep up with what's already done? If you have some spare time for the wiki in the meanwhile, maybe you may continue Map compatibility page... --The Gig (Contact me) 17:19, November 20, 2013 (UTC) ::::::Hi! I just gave a look to Manual/ESC_menu/Appendix, and to the changes to its main page. While the "appendix" thing made the "weapons" page lose a weight of about 11 KB, the change in "ESC menu" page saved only 708 bytes: does a such small saving be worth of creating a separate page? Unlike in the "weapons" page, an "appendix" seems useless in this case (those few infos may have continued to be in the "ESC menu" infos without giving any trouble to the reader: they were all quite short notes). I propose to undo that, what do you think? About the Player settings appendix, instead, for the moment I only gave a veeeery quick look to it... but it seems it does contain enough stuff to have a sense to exist as a separate page, so I can guess it may be okay (although I have to think about its sections organization). :-) --The Gig (Contact me) 17:58, November 21, 2013 (UTC) :::::::Now that I think of it, too many appendexes aren't really a solution. Just one appendix (perhaps subdivided into some categories/subappendexes) might do the trick. The idea is still the same: only basic info. Advanced info and many other ways to achieve the same thing can (and should) be found in the rest of the wiki. --PumpkinKnight (talk) 15:03, November 30, 2013 (UTC) ::::::::Wait, this is not a book... A single appendix for everything would not be practical, in my opinion. However, let's talk about this stuff from next month. I have very very little time for OA in this period, and for December our goal is to release OACMP1. Let's focus on that, for the moment. --The Gig (Contact me) 08:56, December 2, 2013 (UTC)